When Winning is Losing
Had kind of an interesting situation over on Table 371 going on a little while ago involving an Australian player named Andrew Batey.
As he had been explaining to his table, he's subject to especially heavy taxes once he exceeds winning a prize of $5,000 plus his buy-in. Just now we were at the $5,292 level for bustouts (64th-72nd), and in fact Batey would stand to net more (he said) if he went out at that stage than he would at the following level that paid $6,306 (55th-63rd).
Thus did Batey -- who, it should be added, was short-stacked anyway -- shove all in blind a couple of times while we still had more than 63 players left, his justification being that he'd make more going out at that point than at the next level.
The first time he shoved from early position, and it folded to James Kilarjian in the big blind who called with 
. Batey tabled 
. The flop came 
, and Batey looked like he was going out at his desired level. But the turn was the 
and the river the 
, and he'd doubled up. (Kilarjian now has 187,000.)
Soon he was all in again with 
and up against an opponent's pocket eights. The board came 
, and Batey survived again!
Now that we are down to 63 players, he's stopped with the shoving, and currently sits with 35,500.